A writer’s tour of Prague’s murky past

Prague Pictures: Portraits of a City; John Banville; Bloomsbury: 240 pp., $16.95

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Even seen through the clearest lens, Prague looks murky and quirky: home to perhaps the most beloved bridge in Europe (the 14th century Charles); inspiration to author and master of alienation Franz Kafka; and launching pad for a playwright whose works took him first to prison and then to the presidency (Vaclav Havel) of the Czech Republic.

But in making their book series “The Writer and the City,” the editors at Bloomsbury have put this place under a sort of funhouse magnifying glass, placing Prague in the hands of Irish novelist John Banville. This writer and this city, not quite strangers, not quite intimates, make a strange team, sometimes bracing, sometimes perplexing.

Though he’s never lived in Prague, Banville has been a repeat visitor to the Czech Republic’s famously melancholy capital over the years, frequently on literary business. So he has a few tales that reach far beyond standard tourist anecdote. He’s especially good describing the manner and quarters of the old professor who, desperate for money in the oppressive days under the Communist boot between 1968 and 1989, enlisted him in smuggling some artworks out of the country. Banville is sharp, too, in describing the feel of the city’s narrow alleys, the shadowy churches, the old Jewish cemetery, the Vltava River and the massive castle that looks across the river at the city’s medieval core.

He’s less compelling in the middle pages as he sifts through intrigues among 16th and 17th century astronomers and alchemists under the patronage of eccentric emperor Rudolf II. But even then, lyricism flashes.

“Jealous, paranoid, hypochondriacal, incurably melancholy, obsessed with the passage of time and terrified at the prospect of death, Rudolf was a compulsive collector,” Banville writes, “filling room after room of Prague Castle with talismanic objects meant to stave off mortality and be a barrier against the world, all sort of rubbish and kitsch tumbling together with exquisite objets d’art. As is so often the case with weak men who inherit vast power, he was obsessed with things in miniature, hiring entire schools of craftsmen to carve and emboss and inlay the tiniest surfaces, of peals, nut shells, cherry pits, flakes of amber, birds’ eggs, sharks’ teeth, gallstones. No expense was spared, no effort was thought too great. He purchased a painting in Venice, [Italy] ‘Das Rosenkranzfest,’ by one of his favorite artists, Albrecht Durer, and had it carried on foot across the Alps by four stout men, one at each corner.”

An explanation for this 17th century interlude turns up in Banville’s resume. In 1981, he wrote a novel about German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who did much of his best work on planetary motion in the early 1600s in Prague. Banville still had words left to spend on those strange days; astronomy was just edging past astrology and a favor-seeking scientist was likely to take up both. But the author is asking a lot of us readers, in marching us down this alley for dozens of pages when so many other possibilities beckon.

The other perplexing thing about Banville’s book is his way with words -- sometimes witty, sometimes breathtaking, sometimes fusty. “How these monsters enliven history’s duller pages!” he chortles on Page 94, sounding like a Dickensian schoolmarm as he recounts old royal misdeeds.

Yet here he is 25 pages later, stepping up with a charming aside about those moments when a foreigner realizes he’s missing something but can’t figure out what. In those moments, Banville puts on his USA face, reserved for “Unmanageable Situations Abroad -- a sort of misty, ultra-bland half-smile meant to indicate that although I do not understand what is going on, usually because of language difficulties, I am perfectly willing, if everyone is laughing, to have the joke explained, even if it is on me, or, if everyone is scowling, to apologize if I have inadvertently caused offense by word or deed; or simply to suggest in a quiet way that I am not as idiotic as I might seem.”

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Art-centric view

of the Big Apple

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Art/Shop/Eat: New York; Carol von Pressentin Wright; W.W. Norton: 224 pp., $13.95 paper

Look closely at the cover and you’ll notice that “art” is in bold type. This is a new guidebook series (siblings covering Florence, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; Paris; London; and Rome are just out as well) that not only disdains lodgings so that it can linger longer in museums and galleries, but arranges stores and restaurants by their proximity to art landmarks. After the 44-page, room-by-room rundown of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and eight more pages on the Guggenheim Museum, we get dozens of food and retail listings from the surrounding Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Though it’s small in format, the high-quality paper allows for dozens of enticing color photos and reproductions. Be warned, however, that there’s no index -- so if you don’t already know that Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning’s old hangout the Cedar Tavern is in Greenwich Village, you won’t find it. Even if you do know, actually, you won’t find it: The author has left it out, perhaps to make room for fresher addresses.

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Finally, a Lonely trek up the coast

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Coastal California; John A. Vlahides and Tullan Spitz; Lonely Planet: 224 pp., $18.99 paper

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Lonely PLANET has been taking California’s measure for years, but this is its first guidebook focusing on the coast. It has 18 of LP’s reliably detailed maps, many lodgings listings and sometimes-sassy appraisals (including quick directions on how to step off the thickly wooded tourist path in redwood country to see what a clear-cut landscape looks like). But if you’ve lived in this state for a while, much of this will be old news. Before you buy, check out this volume carefully in the bookstore aisle and measure against your memory.

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